


Riding the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway

by elizajane



Series: Just a Little Love Song [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Basically An Almost Perfect Date, First Time, Kissing, M/M, Manchester, Railway Travel, Romance, Sweet, everything is gay and nothing hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:58:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Tom and Miles spend their first day together in Manchester. It involves coffee and crumpets with lemon curd, discussion of politics, and of course nakedness and love-making, and promises of more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riding the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway

**I. The Station (Early Morning)**

He’d approached the question of what to wear with agonizing indecision, up to the very last minute. His uniform was out of the question, obviously, while his Sunday best would perhaps be a bit too formal. Possibly what would have been expected if he’d been going courting back home in Derry -- Anne’s husband Charlie had likely dressed in his best before calling on the family Sunday afternoons -- but this was different. What did you wear to go calling on a young man, instead of a young woman -- and furthermore, a man whom you devoutly hoped might help you _out_ of the clothes, rather than waste time admiring you _in_ them.

Well, perhaps admire a little first. What was it Miles had said? _That truly distracting coverall, under which I like to think you wear not a stitch of clothing._ Not that Tom had worn the pages with re-reading or anything. Perhaps he should be wearing his workaday uniform.

In the end, he selected his second-best trousers, shirt and a sweater vest. He set out for the Grantham station on foot with his only his billfold and Miles’ last letter tucked (as always) in his breast pocket. The three miles to the station were only about an hour’s walk in the dawn. The May morning was mild and clear, and he made good time, walking fast to keep his nerves from jangling too badly.

“Round-trip to Manchester,” he told the clerk behind the ticket window, sliding his coin across the worn wood of the counter, through the small arch cut in the glass. The clerk nodded and reached over to pluck the appropriate strip of card from the neat wooden slots to his left.

“Right you are, sir. Train’s due to arrive in --” the clerk glanced up at the clock mounted on the wall of the waiting room -- “twenty-seven minutes. West-bound platform.” A nod to the appropriate direction.

There were half a dozen people in the waiting room, though none Branson knew personally. He stepped outside into the open air and slouched against the wall with his hands in his pockets, trying to avoid the trap of watching up the track for the tell-tale plume of steam and smoke that heralded the arrival of the train. Instead, he tried to imaging Miles waking in Sparrow Close -- the sound of the church bells, the rattle of a dustbin out the window as someone tipped in a bucket of ash. After today, he’d be able to picture in his mind’s eye the walk from Sparrow Close to the Manchester station. Would Miles stop on the way for a copy of the _Manchester Guardian_?

The journey to Manchester was relieved only slightly by the battered copy of _Heart of Darkness_ \-- Miles’ latest gift -- he’d brought along to help the hours pass more swiftly. By the time they were on the slow approach to Manchester station he’d given up altogether and slipped the book back into the pocket of his jacket. The knot of tension -- half anticipation, half anxiety -- that he’d felt upon waking that morning had drawn itself tighter and tighter as the train moved West. Perhaps they would have nothing to talk about? What if Miles had second thoughts and was nowhere to be found? What if they missed one another at the station -- he’d been through Victoria Station before, but they’d failed to agree upon a place to meet. Would they be able to find one another in the crowd? What if somehow he had confused the day of their meeting?

Tom’s fears were short-lived, however, because no sooner had he stepped from his second-class railway carriage onto the station platform then he caught sight of Miles weaving toward him, waving a folded newspaper above his head, a motion that made up for the fact he was a good hand shorter than most of the businessmen shouldering their way toward the exit.

“Tom! Oi!” He ducked neatly around a laden porter and came to an abrupt halt before Tom, rocking slightly forward on his toes as if to go in for an embrace before rocking back on his heels and settling for a grin instead. He tucked the paper under his arm and stuck out a free hand. “Tom! Wonderful to see you again.”

The knot in Tom’s stomach loosened slightly and he drew in a deep breath, clasping Miles’ hand in his own. Miles’ fingers were as warm as he remembered, though his hand a bit narrower than Tom’s memory had supplied. Miles’ fingers were short and squat compared to Tom’s broad palms, but his grasp was firm, and the way his thumb rubbed across the bone and tendons of Tom’s inner wrist spoke volumes about what his hands might be capable of in less public circumstances. The knot in Tom’s belly re-tightened, but in a much less anxious way than it had before.

“You as well. I--” Tom lost his grip on what thread of thought he might have had amidst the din of the station and the giddy feeling of once again touching -- _touching! they were touching! here and now touching!_ \-- Miles.

Miles tugged at his hand slightly before releasing him and turning back the way he’d come, “C’mon -- have you had breakfast? I couldn’t eat this morning worth a damn -- too nervous. Now you’re here and I’m _starving_. Let’s go to Miss Climpson’s. Just up the road, and the only coffee worth having in this whole damn city.”

**II. The Tea Shop (Mid-Morning)**

Miss Climpson’s Tea & Baked Goods, “home-made confections at affordable prices,” served along with “the finest tea from China, brewed to perfection,” was a mere two streets down and one over from the station. The Monday morning crowd consisted mostly of middle-class women on respite from the morning’s shopping and a few staid-looking businessmen with a cup at one elbow and the morning paper spread out before them. Several young people with the look of University students about them were hunched over books with a pot of tea between them at a table in the front window.

Miles sat Branson down at a table in the corner and went over to speak to the young woman behind the counter. After a few gestures and verbal negotiations, he pulled some coins from his pocket, money changed hands, and he wove his way back to the table while the woman disappeared into what Tom assumed was the kitchen in back.

“I should have asked -- do you drink coffee?”

“Whatever you’ve ordered will be nice, I’m sure.” Tom felt awkward in his seat, as if the chair were too small. He could feel his shoulders hunched, and couldn’t stop his leg jiggling nervously under the table. It all felt too public and private at once -- as if he must come up with something to say, but nothing which he’d desperately wanted to _say_ \-- none of the words that had jostled around in his head all morning ( _want you kissing want you naked want you taste and touch and scent and together want_ ) -- could possibly be spoken here, with the students and the housewives listening in.

Miles slid into the seat opposite, hitched his chair forward. “Sally’s bringing out the coffee and crumpets. Cream and sugar, lemon curd and clotted cream. You Brits sure know how to put together a spread.” He dropped the folded newspaper to one side, and folded his hands primly before him on the lace tablecloth. Under the table, his ankle found Tom’s juddering leg and pressed it into stillness.

Tom found, to his surprise, that the simple physical contact helped enormously. He could breathe again.

“I’ve been reading _Heart of Darkness_ \-- I brought it on the train,” he said, by way of small talk.

“Oh! Yes. Do you like it?” Miles hunched forward with interest. “I mean, that is, if ‘like’ is really the appropriate feeling in this context -- do you know what I mean?”

“I -- yes. I mean yes, I do know. I see what you meant about the critique of imperialism, generally, and the Belgian Congo specifically. In as far as I’ve gotten. I only got as far as the end of the first section. It’s been hard to concentrate on reading, this morning.”

Miles laughed lightly, leaning back as Sally approached with a tray containing two cups, a pot of coffee, and a spread of pastries. “Ah -- here we are -- yes. I know what you mean. I bought the paper intending to read it all front to back as usual, but couldn’t put my mind to it. Dig in,” waving with a hand to the warm crumpets, dripping with butter, as he poured from the coffee pot with his other hand.

“Here -- do you take it black? Milk? Sugar? And, oh -- God, I’m babbling aren’t I.” He paused and took a deep breath, pushing finger and thumb up under his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose in what looked like a habitual gesture. Tom added it to the list of endearing qualities of which he planned to become proprietorially fond.

“I like hearing you talk,” was all he said, trying to convey in the tone of his voice what Miles had conveyed with the touch of an ankle. “Was there anything worth reading in the morning paper?”

Miles shrugged, sucking down a mouthful of coffee with obvious pleasure. “Mrs. Pankhurst’s suffrage rally yesterday got some front-page coverage -- the reporter seems unable to conceal his surprise at the lack of violence. And there’s some discussion of your Home Rule bill that might be of interest, though I wager you’ve heard it all before.”

They passed a good half hour debating the possibilities and limitations of Irish Home Rule as proposed in the House of Commons, drinking the pot of coffee and polishing the plate clean of crumpets between them.

Once, Tom caught himself watching in undisguised fascination as Miles licked butter off his fingers; once, Miles reached out to swipe a daub of lemon curd off Tom’s cheek, checking himself just in time and passing Tom a napkin instead.

Under the table, their ankles stayed pressed together, a proxy for the touch they wanted but couldn’t have.

With the food gone and the coffee drunk down, Miles wiped his hands on his napkin and dropped the cloth on the table. “Right.”

Tom pulled his thoughts back from where they’d been wandering -- distracting thoughts about the way Miles’ curls appeared to be frizzing out slightly in the warmth 0f the bakery -- and made enquiring eye contact.

Miles grinned: “You did ask if we might find a bit of privacy ‘in this city of mine.’ I’m not entirely inept you know, despite my father’s belief to the contrary. I can work a bit of magic, make things happen.”

Tom blushed and cleared his throat. “Well, then.”

“Follow me.” Miles slid out of his seat and donned his cap, waited for Tom to do the same, and then led them both back out into the mid-day sun.

**III. The Y (Mid-Day)**

The Young Men’s Christian Association of Manchester occupied a series of warehouses -- three buildings, side-by-side, in the canal district about a mile’s walk south from Victoria Station. “Natatorium, gymnasium, and common rooms,” Miles provides, like a helpful tour guide, as they turn off the main thoroughfare into a side alleyway and he pulls a set of keys out of his pocket. He stops them at an unmarked door, fumbles with the lock for a moment, and then pushes the door in, reaching around the doorjamb to flick a switch for the electric light.

“Welcome to the Y,” he says, with a small bow, stepping aside so Branson can cross the threshold.

The hallway inside is dim, the light bulb dangling above their head flickering slightly. After closing the door behind them both, Miles leads the way down one hallway, then another, then up two flights of narrow stairs. The gloom of the passage is broken at intervals by light through windows rimed with soot from the coal chimneys of nearby factories. Tom peers out a couple and sees that they’re perched almost directly on top of the canal, water lapping at the foundations below.

“ _Voila_ ,” Miles announces, and suddenly they’ve arrived at -- wherever it was they’d arrived. Tom realizes he’s been too caught up in discussing Republicanism and votes for women and the labor organizing in which Miles and the members of the YMCA were involved to inquire very closely as to their destination. But now here they are, and, after another fumble with the keys, Tom finds himself ducking through the doorway into what turns out to be Miles’ office.

The room, like the rest of the building, is shabby, a bit dusty around the edges, with a window filtering the May sunlight through a film of grime. There’s a desk and several bookcases stuffed with piles of books and papers, ledgers leaning haphazardly against one another. Several chairs, also stacked high with paperwork and various pieces of sports equipment -- is that a hockey stick up against the far wall?

But in the midst of all this clutter, Miles has clearly gone to the trouble of clearing out a space by the window, where there is a sort of -- for lack of a better word nest? -- constructed of several mats (no doubt pillaged from the gym next door) piled one atop another, covered by a worn patchwork quilt, and tidied up with several threadbare pillows. A pot of snowdrops sits in the window, and another pot of violets is arranged on the corner of the desk, standing out rich and warm against the dun-colored desk and piles of manila folders, sheaves of paper, yellowing newsprint. And he sees hamper on the floor, tucked away by the bookshelf closest to the window, that looks suspiciously like it might contain food.

He blinks, and then realizes that Miles -- who’d followed him into the room and locked the door carefully behind them -- is standing to one side fingering the keys nervously, waiting for a reaction.

“You said -- that is -- it’s private. I’ve the day off, no meetings, and no one else turns up on a Monday until half six when there’s pick-up football out in the courtyard, and --”

“I--” Tom fumbles for words, having to clear his throat. He isn’t sure what he wants to say, actually. He isn’t sure what, exactly, he’d been picturing when Miles had written saying he’d find them somewhere private. A secluded bit of parkland? A quiet back alley? Granted, they’d both made it clear that this was more than a quick fumble in the washroom, but -- he’d never had anyone go to any trouble for him, before.

He squeezes his eyes closed and waits for the panic to subside. Reaching out blindly, he catches hold of Miles’ wrist, hand, pulls him closer. Maybe the touch will help ground him, like it had in Miss Climpson’s.

“We don’t have to -- I mean, I want --” Miles, who’d been at ease and in charge all morning, had suddenly quieted, sounded uncertain. Tom recognizes the reaction from their encounter in the Oldsmobile and realizes this is what happens when Miles is worried about over-reaching and rejection.

“No. I--” He pulls the man closer, feels Miles’ solidness against his right shoulder. Miles leans into the touch, as just that morning he leaned toward Tom on the platform at Victoria Station. Only this time, he doesn’t stop himself from making physical contact. Instead, he slides an arm around Tom’s waist, spreading fingers warm across Tom’s belly, pulling the two of them together, his chest against Tom’s back. Tom can feel Miles nosing against his shoulder, looks across the room to where the sunlight is filtering down through dancing motes of dust and lighting up a particularly unfortunate patch of yellow and orange gingham on the quilt.

How to say what he needs to say.

He thinks about Ian, the first boy he’d ever kissed, running away from him through the back garden in Derry.

He thinks about Jimmy, the boy he never kissed, singing Psalm 23 in the choir stall on Easter Sunday.

He thinks about the man -- Gerry? Rory? Terry? -- he’d sucked off behind a pub in Coleraine, who’d bought him a Guinness after but refused to return the favor.

He thinks of Ned, the young man who’d been in Coleraine to help with the harvest, the handful of stolen kisses, his fumbling touch in the stable. Over, really, before it began.

And then he thinks of this man, Thaddeus Miles, whom he’s improbably found -- who’s somehow found him? Who allowed Tom to gather him up and take him back home, who’d tracked him down, who’d wooed him. Who’d brought him here.

He takes a deep breath, and turns around in Miles’ arms, sliding a hand up to Miles’ cheek. Miles blinks at him through smudged spectacles as Tom leans in for a kiss. It’s exploratory. Miles tastes of coffee and lemon curd. His upper lip is slightly salty from the sweat that had gathered as they walked to the Y. Tom can feel the tension in Miles’ neck and shoulders start to loosen, and Miles’ hand on the small of his back flexes encouragingly. Miles’ tongue flickers out to taste him back. Tom wonders how he tastes to another mouth -- of shaving lather and railway soot? of coffee and clotted cream? -- and pulls Miles’ bottom lip between his teeth, sucking gently, running his tongue across the sweet, inner fullness. Miles whimpers slightly and presses in, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth cotton of Tom’s jacket.

The keys in Miles’ fingers fall to the floor with a metallic thud, loud in the intimate silence of the office. They both startle, laughing nervously, break apart. Tom finds he’s panting slightly, feeling a bit uncomfortable in his own skin, his clothes starting to feel tight all over, as if a metamorphosis has begun.

Miles bends over to pick up the keys. He weighs them in his palm for a moment, looking at Tom with a considering expression, and then holds up one of the bunch between finger and thumb. “This is the key to the door,” he says, before laying the whole ring down on the corner of his desk, by the potted violet, easily visible, within reach.

 _So you don’t feel trapped in here_ , is the unspoken message. Tom nods.

Miles shrugs out of his own coat and dropped it on a chair, then holds out a hand for Tom’s, dropping it on top of his own. He tosses his hat on top of that, and, following his lead, Tom does same.

Miles comes back over to stand in front of Tom and slid his hands up Tom’s arms, hands meeting at Tom’s collar, where his nimble fingers open the first two buttons at Tom’s throat. He slides a warm hand between cloth and skin, fingers fitting the curve of Tom’s shoulder, thumb resting at the pulse-point hollow at the base of Tom’s throat.

Tom’s eyes flicker shut, momentarily, but he forces them open again. Wants to see this, memorize this, wants to fold Miles gently into his pocket handkerchief and take him back to Downton on the evening train -- oh, god, how much time do they have left? --

“It’s funny,” Miles is talking to Tom, or maybe to himself, softly, gently, not much above a whisper. Tom drags is attention back from the edge of time-table despair to listen: “You spend all this time -- all these hours -- thinking about what you’ll do behind closed doors. And then you finally get the door closed and locked behind you and you freeze because suddenly everything that you were telling yourself wasn’t possible, before, when people might see, now it is. And it’s fucking terrifying.”

Tom nods. He isn’t sure where the conversation is going, but Miles seems to want agreement, and he feels it’s simple honesty to throw in his vote for the words “fucking terrifying.”

Miles leans in to press a warm kiss against the corner of Tom’s mouth. “Terrifying, but in a _good_ way, yeah?”

“Please?” Tom whispers back, pleading, because it seems like a positive thing to say, and because he can feel the rising tide of want again, lapping against their skin. He turns his head into Miles’ kiss, works his lips down Miles’ neck, hands fumbling unseeingly with the edge of Miles’ sweater vest, rucking it up, pulling the shirt under it out of Miles’ trousers, sliding his fingers down below Miles’ belt so his palms can rest on the curve of Miles’ hips.

He wants the man closer.

“I want -- here --” Miles is pulling at Tom’s own sweater in turn, pulling it up over his head, dropping it on the floor, and then working his way down Tom’s chest alternating the undoing of buttons with the placement of kisses. Even through his undershirt, Tom can feel the foggy warmth of Miles’ mouth against his chest, the press of lips working their way from sternum to navel.

When he gets the shirt front undone, Miles turns his attention to the cuffs, pressing kisses against the pulse point of each wrist in turn. Tom watches him, aware of his own racing heart and the way the room seemed to be heating up far more quickly than sunlight could account for and the way his cock is taking up an increasing amount of room against the inseam of his trousers. He shifts, slightly, to ease the pressure and bites back a moan as cotton pulls across over-sensitive flesh.

Miles is watching him back -- bold yet wary, Tom thinks, as if he knows what he wants and has set about taking it, but as if part of him is still certain it’ll be snatched back. Taken away.

The part of Tom’s brain that’s still functioning enough to remember details of time and place wonders what sort of lover Miles’ friend at University had been. Miles has never mentioned the man’s name. What sort of pain did that omission hide, Tom wonders, suddenly one part jealous and two parts fiercely protective. He wants to drive away the tentative look from behind Miles’ eyes, make sure Miles knows he _wants_ this, all of it, all of him, in ways he’s never really wanted before.

Tom’s never imagined, for example, that the simple act of another person sliding his shirt down over his shoulders would make his knees weak with desire. He’s never really contemplated how the need to communicate _how fucking fantastic_ it feels when Miles licks a kiss behind his right ear would cause little mewling noises to issue forth from his own throat. He’s spent hour upon hour fantasizing about seeing touching tasting smelling hearing Miles like this, hair tousled from Tom’s fingers -- when had he reached up to run his hands through those dark unruly curls? -- mouth wet and slightly swollen with kisses, eyes dilated with pleasure, with a want that mirrored Tom’s own.

But it’s the details he couldn’t possibly have imagined until this moment that break him. The curl of Miles’ tongue when he licks across the inside of Tom’s wrist, tracing the path his fingers had taken on the station platform that morning. The soft exhalation of breath Miles makes when Tom finally gets a hand under Miles’ undershirt, palm against pale skin. The way Miles’ chest and belly are burning up, slick with sweat, yet his nose and the tips of his ears remain startlingly cold.

Tom sets about kissing them into warmth, while Miles melts into the open palms of his greedy, greedy hands.

They make their way in stumbling, stilted dance steps across the room to the sun-warmed nest of blanket and pillows. The mats are rubber and cork, not much more forgiving than a wood floor, but forgiving enough. Miles tries to push Tom -- naked to the waist now -- down onto the quilt, fumbling at Tom’s belt buckle, but Tom stops him: “Not -- need you naked,” he manages to gasp out. That seems important somehow, though he isn’t sure why. Perhaps because in none of his other encounters had either party stripped off so much as a shirt -- sex, in those moments, had been a simple act of opening flies, of fumbling hands and mouths. This won’t last long, _he_ won’t last long, but while it lasts he wants to _feel_ it. Feel Miles. As much of Miles as he possibly can.

Between the two of them, they manage to strip Miles out of his sweater, shirt, and undershirt, and both of them out of shoes and socks and trousers and down to their underthings. And then there are no more clothes of any kind, they're naked, there, right there, before one another, and Tom is looking down at Miles thinking _he’s so beautiful I want - I want -_ and stuttering over the _want_ because the feeling is so huge and unlike anything he’s quite felt before, had room in his being to contain until now. Like a hymn in church and a June thunderstorm rolled into one, with the prickle of awe rolling over your skin.

Suddenly, he’s shivering, shaking. And then Miles is wrapped around him, slotted against him, strong, square fingers flat against his shoulders and the small of his back, and one strong leg hooked around the back of Tom’s knee, tipping him, guiding him, drawing them both down onto the makeshift mattress.

The heat radiating off Miles’ body is shocking in its intensity, second only in sensation to the near-painful scratch of wiry hair against Tom’s dick and the soft-hard press of another man’s flesh against his own. To the extent that he’s still capable of coherent thought, Tom realizes he never _never_ would have been able to accurately imagine this feeling -- both utterly familiar and alien in equal proportion. He’s seen, touched, tasted another man’s cock before, yes -- even had someone else touch him. But then it had felt like a dislocation: as if he were touching himself, except not. He’d felt strangely out of body, on observer, disconnected from events as they were happening. It had felt good -- he hasn’t lied to Miles when he’s said the touch was wanted, at the time. But it had all been rather anticlimactic, had left him frustrated and yearning.

This, however, is the _opposite_ of dislocation. This is a crashing, crushing, full-body sense of _here-and-nowness_.

“God, Jesus, God, please, oh God -- please --” It takes him an elongated moment to realize the chanting litany of words are his, though Miles is providing a descant all his own, more sounds than words, whispered wetly against the hollow at the base of Tom’s neck, sucked and nibbled into the flesh of his shoulder, across the planes of his collarbone.

Tom can feel the ripple of tension and need in the muscles below Miles's skin, below Tom's fingers, mouth, against the skin of his belly, his thigh, the pivot-point where they're pressed groin-to-groin. Miles, who ended up below Tom where they fell on the mattress, jerks, rocks his hips upward so their cocks rub skin against skin, friction and heat rolling together, painful, exquisite. Tom levers himself up on an elbow, panting, reaches between them, slides a hand up the inside of Miles' thigh, and takes Miles firmly in hand.

Miles gasps in -- pleasure? surprise? desperation? One hand flies out against the quilt, scrabbling, then back again, jerkily, hovering, settling against the unfamiliar terrain of another man's touch -- against _Tom's_ touch, tracing veins, bones, the join of skin and skin. It's Miles' turn to trumble now. Tom can tell he's waiting, waiting for Tom to make his move.

Tom imagines he could press them both together, work the silky skin hard and fast until they’re both gone -- but he wants to be aware for this, watch this, see this. He wants to remember the sunlight glinting off the burnished black curls that nestle in Miles’ groin, damp now with sweat. He wants to remember the way Miles looks back at him -- the way he can see Miles start to protest, but then _take note_. The way understanding suddenly floods his face (and pulses in his cock). The flush that runs mottled, pink and feverish across his chest when he realizes Tom wants him this way, splayed out, on view.

Tom wants to remember the moment when Miles’ eyes say _yes, you can have this, have me_.

This isn’t like his other times. He hadn’t been able to see Ned, in the back of that barn, as they’d stood close together, well-meaning, clumsy hands down one anothers’ trousers. As second times went, he supposed, it hadn’t been bad. But there had been no time for leisure, no time for _attention_. Now he can lie here on his side, left leg flung across Miles’ thigh, giving the smaller man something to push against, and work his hand back and forth along the shaft of Miles’ penis. He can note the way the soft foreskin slides, feel the pulse and build of Miles’ orgasm, listen to his lover’s breathing -- fast and harsh -- and the noises he makes in his throat -- sounds of protest or approval -- as Tom plays his fingers this way and that, pressure, pull, light, then hard. It’s mesmerizing, in a way, and he realizes with absorbed fascination that touching Miles like this is nearly like touching himself. His body knows the motions, recognizes the cues, and as he jerks and twists, draws faster and harder, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember where one body begins and the other one ends.

And then suddenly the timelessness of the moment breaks into immediacy as Miles’ rolls toward him, jerking up, gasping another of his beautiful, wordless sounds of desire, and he’s coming, pulsing hot and thick into Tom’s hand which has, out of force of habit, come up to cup and contain the mess. And they’re kissing, wet and sloppy, and Miles is laughing a little, silently, and shaking from the release.

And before Tom realizes what’s happening, Miles reaches down between them and shifts Tom’s slicked hand from his own cock to Tom’s still-hard shaft, wraps the fingers around, and with lazy post-coital movements of hips and hands pushes Tom himself over the edge.

**V. The Station (Evening)**

“Here,” Miles said, pulling two orange tickets out of his breast pocket and tucking them into the inner pocket of Tom’s coat.

“What --?” Tom reached in and pulled the tickets back out. The two of them were back in Victoria station, standing in idle anticipation of the 6:24 departure for Grantham by way of Grantham. The ticket were what he thought they were -- two open-ended fares for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway between Manchester and York. “When did you -- ?”

Miles grinned, “This morning, with a wish and a prayer. You’re not the only religious one, you know.”

And then, in another of his summer-storm moments of vulnerability, “You will come back, won’t you?”

They’d had their true goodbyes back in the office, after dozing in one anothers’ arms for the better part of two hours, all passion spent, followed by a rather Bacchanalian luncheon of bread, cheese, sausage, a bottle of wine (“Don’t tell the teetotalers I work for!” Miles had whispered into Branson’s ear, with a lingering lick that had sent shivers up Tom’s spine), and a treacle tart -- part of which Tom had, in a moment of inspiration, sucked from Miles’ rather intriguingly sensitive nipples.

After eating, they’d helped one another dress once more and set about erasing all traces of their Monday afternoon tryst from the office. By the time they were ready to set out on the return journey to Victoria Station, men and boys were starting to trickle into the Y complex following the end of the factory shift, and the end of the school day, and Tom had had to duck out the back while Miles made his separate way through the front offices, checking in with several lieutenants whom he said would get the evening classes going without him while he walked Tom to the station.

Just before they’d departed from office door to leave the building by separate routes, Miles had laid a hand on Tom’s arm. “Wait -- here,” he’d said, solemnly, and pulled Tom down into a gentle, lingering kiss.

They stood in the slanting light of the room, foreheads pressed together, reluctant to break the illusion of solitude and joy woven around and through their tiny world of two.

“I can’t -- I don’t want --” Tom tried.

“I know.” Miles said. And then, after a pause. “With -- Willard --” Tom didn’t miss the slight hesitation before the name -- “I don’t think he cared, as I did. But it used to be hard. A bit easier, at University, where you and your best mates could pal around, arms over the shoulder, side by side in the dining hall, horsing around on the playing field, that sort of thing. But still. We’d be one way with each other in the privacy of our rooms, and then it would change as soon as we walked out the door. A different -- energy. A different way of moving around the world. You conceal the connection between you, as best you can, and hope no one notices.”

He paused, but didn’t seem finished. Tom waited.

“You learn how to do it, but it always hurts. At least, it always hurt, for me. And there’s a cost, because you come back into this space, into the privacy of the space you have together, and the outside world still clings to you. You can feel it, clinging to your skin like a film of coal dust. That’s what I started to say, before, about how it used to be hard, sometimes. I’d come in, so full of want, and Will would be there, and I stand there in the doorway with absolutely no idea what to do next -- how to get from one side of the threshold to the other.”

Another pause. Tom caressed the nape of Miles’ neck with his thumb and waited for the rest of the story.

“What I mean to say is -- I learned to take it on and off a bit better, the outside ‘we’re best pals’ act. And it helped to find signs, rituals. Locking the door. Simple touches.”

“It helped, when you touched me this morning in the tea shop,” Tom offered. “It felt -- it was comforting.”

“We don’t give this up when we walk through that door,” Miles agreed, “We just keep it all protected, safe inside.” He laughed a short, sad little laugh. “I just hate the part where you have to put it all away.”

Tom dipped his head to give Miles another kiss. “I’ll help you remember how to take it out again.”

It _had_ been painful to walk to the station, side by side but not touching. Tom had been sure that everyone on the street -- every last man, woman, and child -- had been able to understand their connection by simply looking at them. Wasn’t it screamingly obvious? But apparently not, since they passed at least three policemen on the beat, none of whom turned a head or arrested them for unnatural acts of any kind.

And now here they were, standing on the platform waiting for Tom’s train, by mutual agreement sticking to political conversation and the banalities of everyday life -- the Downton Abbey social schedule for the coming weeks, Miles’ obligations for the Y, and some talk of a conference in London later in the summer that might be an opportunity to rendezvous.

“Of course I’ll be back,” Tom said, seeing the storm-clouds of fear in Miles’ eyes as he tucked the railway tickets safely back in his pocket. He wanted, achingly, to be able to kiss them away. But that wasn’t possible, here. Instead, he caught Miles’ hand in his own and swept a thumb across his inner wrist, the same way Miles had caressed him two platforms over that morning. Had it really only been that morning? It seemed like a geologic age. And also the blink of an eye.

“Of course I’ll be back.”

Miles’ face broke into a smile, and the clouds scattered far and away.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The only first-hand experience I have of Manchester is the Manchester airport and one quite-nice night in a youth hostel in the canal district. All geographical, historical, and cultural errors are entirely my own, since if I’d brought home a history of Manchester to do fic-related research, I think [CrowGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crowgirl) would’ve smacked me upside the head.
> 
> 1a. I did, however, verify via The Internet that the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway is the likely candidate for trains between Grantham and Manchester in 1914, and that the station they used in Manchester was Victoria Station. For those who care.
> 
> 2\. Joseph Conrad’s fictionalized critique of European imperialism, _Heart of Darkness_ , first appeared in serialized form in 1899 and was published as a novella in 1903. 
> 
> 3\. Miss Climpson is borrowed, with full affection, from the novels of Dorothy Sayers.


End file.
